As soon as they knew the bones were ancient they sent them for a detailed examination which came up with no affiliation with any modern people but the closest affiliation was with a southeast Asian group. That and the age and the rest of the find placed them in the paleo-indian group.
The recent DNA test merely confirmed all the other evidence.
I thought they carbon dated them shortly after discovery.
Anyway, the issues, as I recall, were that the skeleton did not resemble paleo-Americans, plus, the bones revealed a coastal or maritime diet, that was hundreds of miles away.
I also read an article in National Review in the 1990s that disclosed that significant parts of the skeleton had “disappeared” from the lab, and that the skeleton had been handled by un-gloved tribal elders
I'm a science and technology guy, so I was very disturbed that something this rare would have to be turned over to self-identified Native Americans with no known relationship to the bones, instead of being available for continued research and museum display.